Biting my lip, I curse the day I attracted the queen’s attention but have no choice other than to comply. I follow the two guards to the palace, where I am searched for weapons before being led deeper into the fortress and left in a salon adorned in emerald green and gold. Gods, the pretentiousness of the room makes me itch. Portraits ofpast queens and consorts stare down at me from gilt frames mounted along the walls, some with the vampires they’ve turned to extend the bloodline. Gold and diamond chandeliers hang over richly upholstered furniture, shedding soft light that mimics the sun in a way that puts the fluorescent lamps in my apartment to shame. Leaded crystal vases overflow with flowers imported from topside.
I have an irrational impulse to break something. Even when I was a prince, I hated rooms like this. It’s too easy to see it for what it is, an attempt to use wealth to either intimidate or impress. In my case, maybe both.
Jangling metal to my right distracts me from my rogue thoughts, and I turn, bowing low when I recognize the queen. I’ve never met Valeska in person before, but I watched from the street during her coronation. Even if I hadn’t recognized her though, the crown of gold and rubies on her head is as good as a name tag.
“My queen.” She’s not my queen. She’s not even my species.
“Rise, Damien, and for this meeting, you may call me Valeska.”
I straighten, noticing the source of the sound I heard earlier. Her dress is made entirely of two-inch gold panels hooked together at their apex to a chainmail sheath, forming a body-skimming gown that clinks when she moves. I have to admit, the queen is as stunning as the rumors suggested, with wavy black hair and silky brown skin, red-tipped nails, and full lips. Her oversized eyes are as gold as her dress and put off their own light, a trait common to both shades and vampires.
“I’m honored,” I say, although I’m actually repulsed. As beautiful as the queen is, it’s impossible to forget that the same rumors that extol her allure claim she’s taken herthrone by ruthlessly murdering the last queen and her consort. She holds ultimate power. One word from her and the vampires of Night Haven could be using my head as their soccer ball.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you here.” She jingles to my side.
“I am.” I decide to get straight to the point. “I assume you received my letter. I regret that my curse precludes me from serving the throne directly.”
Her smile doesn’t falter, but her eyes narrow at the corners. “Right. The Gowdie curse. You’ve been bound to do the will of their bloodline for...”
“Almost four centuries.”
She clasps her hands together in front of her hips and glances up at the nearest portrait. “Shades such as you are exceedingly rare. At the last census, we knew of only three —yourself, Cassius Blackthorn, and Morpheus Maxilla.”
Both men are my friends, torn from our world by the same rift the witches used to capture me. Although I haven’t seen either of them in over six months, we share a lasting bond. “Yes. We are the only ones. The door to my world has been closed.”
“Pity. And now you are the only one left in our hive.”
My hackles rise at her use of the term hive. Covens have masters. The masters of covens that nest together in a common area often choose a queen with authority over disagreements between covens. Large nests develop shared armies to protect their vampires. Night Haven falls into that category. It is a large, multi-coven underground settlement. But a hive… a hive denotes multiple covens who have been conquered and assimilated, all reporting to the same queen with ultimate control and authority —a queen who replaces or eliminates the individual coven masters. A queen with ultimate control. It is a sign of her ambition to trot that word out, and it makes my skin prickle.
It's my fellow shades I’m the most concerned about though. I would have felt along the shadows if either were hurt or killed, but not necessarily if they were captured or left Night Haven. “What happened to Cassius and Morpheus?”
“You haven’t heard.”
I shake my head. “As I mentioned, my time is not my own.”
“Right, right, you serve the Gowdies. Well, let me bring you up to speed. Cassius left for another coven in the Midwest for reasons unknown, and Morpheus has accepted a place in a triune topside, relinquishing his Night Haven citizenship.”
“I wasn’t aware.”Fuck. Becoming a triune requires trusting a witch and a shifter with one’s life, especially the witch who must perform the spell to bind the threesome. That type of bond is not something entered into lightly, especially not for a shade like me. It would mean giving up any hope of going home. I suspect Morpheus’s decision to accept the bond and Cassius’s decision to leave the coven has everything to do with Valeska’s rise to power.
The queen’s dress clinks as she moves around me. “You are the last of your kind in my kingdom. I must confess, Damien, I’ve never met a shade in person. Everything I know about them comes from books. They say our species are distantly related, vampires having evolved on Earth and shades evolving on?—”
“Tenebris.”
“Right. I’ve looked into the three of you. You tend to keep to yourselves.”
My jaw tightens. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“No.”
“The scribes tell me that the witches conjured the three of you from your realm during the European witch trials and that you sacrificed your freedom so that Cassius and Morpheus could escape.”
“Something like that.” The Gowdies had dragged three of us through the rift. I’d attacked, breaking the spell long enough for Cassius and Morpheus to flee. It wasn’t sacrifice though, but responsibility. They were warriors for my kingdom, ones I was sworn to protect as their prince. But I never intended to martyr myself. I intended to kill the bitch and go home.
It didn’t work out.
“Interesting. It is said that you carry the power of a demon within you, and that is why your heart continues to beat, unlike our kind. Is that true?”
I hide my laugh behind feigned interest in the art above me. “We’re not demons. Unlike your kind, we’re born alive and stay alive.” No one knows for sure what magic makes us immortal. Does any creature ultimately understand the origins of their species? Even humans haven’t closed the gaps on that puzzle.
